One will do four Baja California dishes (aka Baja Med-cuisine). The other will prove he’s a Tuscan-food acolyte. The wine is…from Argentina.

Gonzalez and Guerrero met at the recent Tijuana Innovadora ideas-exchange conference, which connected a number of San Diegans with Tijuanenses.

For this eight course (technically) meal, I imagine a cook-off a la New York Times writers Julia Moskin and Kim Severson: Chef Gonzalez’s pasta casserole with a white shrimp sauce will be answered by chef Guerrero’s marinated duck breast plus a portobello and blue cheese taco. Get into the international flavor fray: This dinner starts at 7 p.m. is $50 get reservations at (619) 269-4207.

And there's a reason I didn't lead with this dinner on
Monday, Dec. 10.

The only way you’re getting into that Erizo pop-up dinner with Javier Plascencia is to call in food-industry favors. Or dash out pleading emails to the host/owner of
El Take It Easy
. Or walk up to that North Park restaurant (so like a converted barn), hoping some last minute cancellation let’s you into that 89-person-capacity room.

The first seating is at 5:15 p.m. Right now all of the stools and chairs inside are spoken for, and have been for about a month. Turns out people want to behold the face (guapo, as the best spokesperson's seem to be) of a new gourmet Tijuana. He has regularly appeared in Big Media (Bourdain's old "No Reservations" show; a very great New Yorker piece;). Plascencia made a cooking cameo at El Take earlier this year, repping his high-minded Misión 19 restaurant.
Read more about that appearance here.

This time, Plascencia is channeling another one of his restaurants, Erizo Baja Fish House & Market.

It’s a brightly welcoming cebicheria in Tijuana. A comfortable clientele parks it on picnic tables inside. I had a memorable encounter with its display case – those crazy geoduck clams look like elephant trunks overflowing tiny shells – and with the clean-flavored tostada ceviche and beer.

You can beg the event’s host, El Take It Easy owner Jay Porter, for a spot at Events@thelinkery.com (he also owns the Linkery) -- I hear after 9:30 p.m. walk-ins. Or just go down to Tijuana already, sheesh.

(This Plascencia dinner is part of a Baja Chefs Pop-Up Dinner series, it had been originally scheduled for November.)